Tech golf prepares for Big 12 tourney

The Texas Tech golf teams begin play in the Big 12 Conference championships today, the 29th-ranked Tech women at Lawrence (Kan.) Country Club and the No. 47 Red Raiders at Whispering Pines in Trinity.

The women will play 54 holes, the men 72, with both three-days events concluding Sunday. Both Tech teams tee off just before 9 a.m. today with the men’s field playing two rounds on day one.

The Tech women are seeded fourth in the field, behind No. 16 Texas A&M, No. 17 Oklahoma State and No. 18 Baylor. Texas, Oklahoma and Iowa State are all in the top 40 of the latest Golfweek rankings.

The Lady Raiders won the Texas State Challenge in the fall and the Mountain View Collegiate last month, the first time since 1995-96 a Tech team won multiple tournaments in a school year. The last two years, they finished fifth and sixth in the Big 12 championships.

“We are looking at the Big 12s as just another tournament,” Tech coach JoJo Robertson said. “We don’t want to get too excited about it, but instead try to accomplish the things we’ve done all spring and keep our focus on the things we can control. If our players play well and everyone shows up for all three rounds, we should be just fine.”

Tech’s Gabby Dominguez and Kim Kaufman both are slotted among the individual top 50 in the latest Golfweek rankings. Dominguez has six top-10 finishes in a row, and she and Kaufman have team-best strokes per round averages of 72.3 and 72.6, respectively.

Another Lady Raider, Deborah DeVilla, is coming off her first career medalist win at the Knights and Pirates Invitational this month in Florida.

The Tech men have finished fourth in the Big 12 tournament each of the last two years. This time around, they’ll be relying on four true freshmen: Clement Sordet, Matias Dominguez, Esteban Restrepo and Henry Todd. Junior Finley Ewing IV rounds out the lineup.

“These guys have played good, and we have had this lineup and done well,” Tech coach Greg Sands said. “Anytime you take some young guys like that, you really just have to wait and see. Clement has played well and is our No. 1 player and a true freshman ... and Finley has been playing solid. In golf, you can really have two guys carry a team, and that’s what we need.”

Sordet, who came to Tech from France, has five top-10 finishes this season.